Falklands on HIGH ALERT: Hundreds of British troops sent to Islands to boost security
February 2, 2015 in News by The Manimal
SOURCE: UK EXPRESS
Senior military sources say the war games will be “low profile” as part of a commitment to ensure the UK can secure its overseas garrisons.
Currently the islands have a core military presence of 1,200 troops, four Typhoon fighter jets and a missile battery.
A senior source said: “The aim is to put more than 1,000 troops from five different cap badges into the islands by November but they will deploy in small groups from 150 to 300, for short tours.”
Last night the Ministry of Defence said there were “currently no plans to increase the number of troops deployed to the Falklands”.
However, the military source said the plan did not represent a “permanent increase in garrison numbers but a series of high-readiness exercises”.
Last night Air Commodore Andrew Lambert, of the UK National Defence Association, said: “I was deputy commander and air commander in 1997, when we had 2,000 troops stationed on the islands. At that time we said we were not prepared to reduce them because we could not know what Argentina had in mind: 2,000 troops was, in our opinion, the absolute minimum required to secure a proper defence. Yet this has been reduced to 1,200 and that includes cooks and medics.”
Two weeks ago the Sunday Express revealed that one of the Navy’s newest warships, the Type-45 destroyer HMS Dragon, had been ordered to the Falklands.
Tensions have increased now Argentina is negotiating to lease 12 Russian Sukhoi Su-24 supersonic, all-weather attack aircraft from Russia with which it could patrol over Port Stanley again.
